Krones looks to seal deal at Anuga with new aseptic valves

German food machinery giant Krones has confirmed to BeverageDaily.com that it will launch new aseptic valves as the latest additions to its EvoGuard series at the Anuga FoodTec trade show in March.

Krones launched the range in January 2011, to provide all the valve types used in a beverage plant, where durable valves are needed to redirect or shut off product flow and effect tank discharge.

The range now features modularised disk valves and single-seat valves (for simple pipe shut-off operations), double-seal valves as an “affordable alternative” for media separation and double-seat valves for highly automated function sequences, to help cleaning fluid or product flow.

Willi Wiedenmann, product manager valves technology, Krones, told BeverageDaily.com this morning: “For Anuga [March 27-30] we have continued with the EvoGuard development. We started with butterfly valves, then single-seated valves, then double-seal valves and mix-proof valves, and now we also have aseptic valves in our programme.

“For example, aseptic single-seated valves with metal below and also aseptic mix-proof valves. And we will present these valves at Anuga.”

Safety and reliability

Seal quality was essential for production safety and reliability, Wiedenmann said, where if a valve seal was unsafe or unreliable, then it could potentially injure staff or contaminate product streams.

He said: “The valves have to close or open the pipelines, and if there is a mix-up of fluids, for example of caustic and product, there can be immense problems.

"So we use different valves. For example, only simple shutoff butterfly valves or single-seat valves. If it is very important to ensure no mixing-up of fluids, then you have to use double-seal value or mix-proof valves. This is the difference.”

Discussing the development of the EvoGuard range, Wiedenmann said that Krones had excellent in-house expertise; he himself has worked for Krones for the last three years, and before that spent 11 years at rival GEA Tuchenhagen.

He said: “We had a great opportunity to start at zero with the development of these valves. We know a lot about valves and we know the historic problems.

Third-party issues

Wiedenmann explained that, in the past, Krones had bought valves from competitors to use in its machines and plants, but that this had led to difficulties.

He said: “We deal with different pressures, for example. And in the past it was not easy to get all our valves from one rival, so we decided to make the valves ourselves, and solve these historic problems.

“We can make the valves we need, and we have had a lot of contact with plant engineers during the development phase, making the valves to ensure that no problems will happen in our plants.

Wiedenmann also confirmed that the valves would work with non-Krones machinery: “Because, in the past we bought valves from competitors, the form, pressures, nominal diameters, etc. are the same,” he said.

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